


Brood

by LookingForOctober



Series: Ellen and Geoffrey and Oliver and Shakespeare [2]
Category: Slings & Arrows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 16:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20260831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForOctober/pseuds/LookingForOctober
Summary: Nine connected drabbles.  King Lear.





	1. Chapter 1

It's the sort of thing Geoffrey would do, saying lines to an empty theatre. Ellen is barely surprised to be visited by Geoffrey's usual visitor.

"Come weigh in, you're dying to."

"Ha, ha. A sighting. What took you so long?"

She measures her words. "Geoffrey listened because he remembered you're capable of inspiration. That wasn't how I remembered you." 

That shuts him up, briefly.

"Before you ask -- No. I'm not setting my sights on Lear, I'm thinking about his elder daughters. Your idea."

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth..."

"But what kind of father was Lear? I ask you, Oliver."


	2. Chapter 2

They sit side by side, looking ahead, imagining a full stage.

"He probably wanted a son, everyone did back then," Ellen says. "Instead, three daughters, two of whom learned to play his games and one who refused."

"He was king," Oliver says. "He was teaching them to rule."

"He was teaching them the rules. And they learned better than he ever expected."

"Why do you blame him for the games?"

"Because children are vulnerable. They learn what they see. Lear says tell me what I want to hear, did they have any choice? When they were young?"

"They grew up."


	3. Chapter 3

"We'd be happy for you to do a special presentation, Ms. Fanshaw," the elementary school secretary says. "I'll be in touch."

Ellen walks home feeling happy. "I'm going to be a teacher!" she tells the neighbor she hardly ever sees.

They chat pleasantly, and then... "Why do you act in Shakespeare, it's so ancient and incomprehensible?" The dreaded question. The beautiful words? The universal themes?

"I like forcing modern sense on it. Psychological realism. A human reason to go with the ancient words; a complete story, the words and I."

She searches anxiously, as always. Has she made herself comprehensible?


	4. Chapter 4

Oliver lurks in the wings; Ellen takes pity and gives him the acknowledgment he wants, and an argument he won't refuse.

"It's not Goneril and Regan who should be twins, it's Regan and Cordelia. They're in the middle of a family squabble, and she shows up with an army. Whatever she says, her actions speak louder."

Oliver nods. "Maybe it's being dead, but-- You've got something there."

"Being dead?"

"It's easy for me to say, I won't have to put it on."

Geoffrey appears unexpectedly. "You've both forgotten: it's not just a play about death and senility, it's about love."


	5. Chapter 5

She hasn't seen Oliver in weeks. She comes to the theatre to watch Geoffrey's As You Like It. She was missing; he put on a play with no part for her. She can hardly complain. 

"_This_ is a play about love," she whispers to Geoffrey in the wings. "Not passion, love. Finding what's right, and living within it."

On stage, Rosalind says, "Do not fall in love with me."

"It's about marriage," Geoffrey whispers. "One love. One future. Together."

Ellen imagines stopping this conversation with a kiss. Dragging Geoffrey off. She could.

"Let's make a baby." 

She doesn't say it.


	6. Chapter 6

When Geoffrey finds out about Ellen's now regular school gig, he looks at her shrewdly and says, "Lear, and children."

"It makes me feel alive, Geoffrey," Ellen says defensively. Too defensively. She sighs. "It reminds me of my daughter."

"You know, it's not too late..."

Ellen's already shaking her head.

"You make a beautiful mother."

"That wasn't me, it was someone that I might have been," Ellen says crossly.

More gently than she'd ever have expected from him when he's telling the truth as he sees it, he says, "Why do you insist on thinking you'd make a terrible mother?"


	7. Chapter 7

Everywhere Ellen goes, she sees children. Crying in a restaurant, shrieking in a parking lot. Wailing and giggling. Once, Ellen ignored them so thoroughly that for her they didn't exist. Now, she watches them out of the corner of her eye, as if they'll disappear if she looks at them straight.

Loving Geoffrey was always an attempt to stay one step ahead; to keep him here, with her. Loving a child? Children never abandon the now.

But all the children she sees -- they're someone else's children.

In one way, she's like a mother. Eventually she has to let them go.


	8. Chapter 8

At the theatre, Ellen can talk to Geoffrey and Oliver, or she can watch the activity, but she can't be a part of it. 

"It's like I'm an honorary director, because I'm not acting," she complains to Geoffrey (and Oliver).

"Next season--"

"Are you going to do another comedy?"

"No. Comedies are playing it safe. People like the comedies, but they're not moved by them."

"So...?"

"Antony and Cleopatra," Geoffrey says. "Really."

Ellen can feel the smile spreading across her face. "Let's make a play, Geoffrey," she says. Freudian slip.

Geoffrey freezes, and from somewhere behind Ellen, Oliver laughs maniacally.


	9. Chapter 9

"I have an answer for you," Ellen says. She and Geoffrey are alone. "About what kind of mother I'd be. Alternate me was _different_, Geoffrey. Less impulsive. More responsible."

"Not--"

"No, not unrecognizable. But what do you think she had to go through? It's change after change after change between us. I can't be her. I'd be killing myself."

"This is all Oliver's fault!"

"Shut up, Geoffrey. This is about me. About my capacity to love, or die."

"Are you _trying_ to live a tragedy?"

"Of course not. Comedy with enough psychological realism that I can move myself. As me."


End file.
